ANNOUNCE: GHC 6.10.2 Release Candidate 1

[Thorkil Naur]

Hello,

On Thursday 19 March 2009 18:03, Ian Lynagh wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 12:35:01PM +0100, Thorkil Naur wrote:
> ...
> > 1. An important property of such installers is that you are told, right 
from 
> > the start, that all the information you are presented with during the 
> > installation process can be accessed at any time, after completion of the 
> > installation, and you are told how. In case of GHC, something like a 
> > reference to a suitable spot, given as part of the output from ghc --help. 
I 
> > don't see any trace of such a facility on the introduction screen. (I know 
> > that other installers don't do this either, which is part of the reason 
why I 
> > try to avoid them.)
> 
> I didn't follow that; can you say exactly what text you want where,
> please?

The point of this item is to avoid the uneasiness that I often feel when 
running though such a sequence of screens, that some piece of information 
that I am given is not available anywhere else and that it is forever gone, 
once the screen that contains it has been replaced by the next in the 
sequence. Hence also my interest in being able to copy and paste the contents 
of these screens.

A suggested way to reduce this uneasiness would be:

1a. Add this text to the Introduction screen: "The complete text of the 
installation session will be available after installation 
at /usr/share/doc/ghc/INSTALL_SESSION_MACOSX.txt [say]. Invoking the command 
'ghc --help' in a Terminal window will mention the location of this file." 
So, all I have to remember now is 'ghc --help'.

1b. And, of course, now we have to produce this file 
INSTALL_SESSION_MACOSX.txt, somehow, and include it in the installation. I am 
not sure what this file should be, but let me say first that I am not 
thinking of an installation log or something like that, I am thinking of 
something that can be produced statically, as part of producing the 
installation package. Ideally, if the package is produced by some tool, it 
would be possible to extract the contents of various screens in text form and 
use that. Or perhaps there is some script for generating the installation 
package that could be used directly or with a few edits. In any case, the 
file should contain, in text form, whatever text is presented to the user 
during installation. So a list of header, contents, in the order used during 
installation.

1c. And 'ghc --help' should be extended to mention the 
INSTALL_SESSION_MACOSX.txt file. Not necessarily a trivial change, I admit, 
but I would consider it very useful.

> ...

Best regards
Thorkil